Embodiments of the invention relate to a monitoring circuit of a semiconductor device, and more particularly to a technology for easily analyzing a defect of the semiconductor device.
A semiconductor integrated circuit includes circuits of the same pattern and also includes a redundancy circuit so that although some circuits have a defect or failure according to a process variable, the semiconductor integrated circuit may be used as a normal product.
An operation in which programmed array E-fuse (ARE) data is stored in the register is referred to as a boot-up operation. A boot-up operation is initiated based on a reset signal inputted from the outside during an initialization operation.
An E-fuse basically has a form of a transistor and is programmed by applying a high electric field to a gate and rupture a gate insulation layer. While an E-fuse circuit may be realized in diverse forms, an array E-fuse (ARE) circuit having unit fuse cells formed in an array is widely used. Generally, when a semiconductor integrated circuit performs an initialization operation, which is a power-up operation, a data programmed in an ARE circuit is read and subsequently stored in a register, and the stored data is used. Thereafter, a repair operation is performed using the data stored in the register.
However, if a read period of a semiconductor memory device configured to use the ARE increases, the boot-up time unavoidably increases so that fuse-repair information may be damaged. In other words, if the boot-up operation fails due to the increasing read period or if the boot-up operation stops due to an unexpected malfunction, it is impossible for the semiconductor memory device based on ARE to monitor the failed or stopped boot-up operation at a remote site.